My 5 year old desktop has kicked the bucket so I'm going to embark on building my own here in the coming weeks. I'll post what I'm going to be putting into it once I've done some price searching and have it somewhat finalized. Do you guys have any tips on going through this process? I have the basic knowledge of how to do it and have fiddled with my older PC quite a bit. I've never mounted a MOBO or power supply nor have I installed a CPU, though.

What are some good GPU's between 250 and 350 dollars? I'm considering Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB for 339.99.

There's no trick to assembly these days. Personally I wouldn't go for the higher-end video card. Around $200 is usually the sweet spot for price vs. performance, but check the benchmarks at Tom's Hardware and AnandTech to find the best option for you.

Zeuter wrote:If you're set on that price though, I've found this to be a really good choice. My mother has one. For $20 more there's the 3Gb version.

That's a nice card, but I decided to pick up the one I previously listed as I found it for 320 on Amazon (300 with rebate) and there was only one left in stock. This may or may not be a mistake because a new mid-grade NVIDIA may be coming out soon which could result in a price drop, but I'm missing having a desktop.

Also, Physx support would have been nice, but I've always tended to buy AMD graphics cards and the autism within me decided to go with one again.

I decided to buy an Asrock Extreme 6 MOBO earlier because they were offering 60 bucks worth of RAM to go with it on Newegg even though I was leaning more towards an ASUS MOBO at a similar price.

I'm also probably going to get an i5 and 120GB Sandisk SSD. I'll have an older hard drive and my external hard drive to complement the SSD.

Any recommendations on a good, cheap CPU cooler that can beat the South Florida heat?

My biggest worry about building this PC has to do with the MOBO. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Cassiel wrote:Have you had an SSD before? Just be aware that it will fail -- you won't get 5 years out of a consumer-grade SSD -- and back your data up accordingly.

I've never had an SSD but I know they don't last very long. It will only be for Windows and maybe a couple programs/games that I want to keep on there. Everything important will be in other places and I already have some stuff such as my music and certain documents backed up in various other places.

I don't plan on buying the cooler until I have everything so I can make the proper measurements, but the case I'm thinking of buying should be able to fit one.

Thanks for the tips, Cass, and I'll definitely be considering that Cooler as it's the right price and it looks like it has excellent reviews.

For the video card, consider shelling out another $50 and getting a GTX 770. I highly recommend the Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler. It's quieter than the stock Intel fan, and performs as well as most liquid coolers, without their risks.

Anyway, I built my PC and had it up and running. Installed the OS and everything, but I found out that after installing the drivers for the GPU, fiddling around in the BIOS, and doing whatever I could to possibly fix the problem that the PCIe slots were not functioning. So I had to RMA it. So now I'm stuck waiting.

That Storm Sniper comes with some baller fans, but I can't stand the way Cooler Master cases look for some reason.

I ended with getting a Corsair 400R because I found it for 80 bucks at a local store. I was also considering a Fractal Design R4 because it's supposed to keep everything super quiet. I prefer minimalistic designs, and I hate windows with a passion.